What have I done to deserve
this? The Golden
Globes are
cancelled. Nicole
Kidman is pregnant and
I’m not the Daddy. And,
I have to see a
movie with Ice Cube! Rock
bottom is a
cold, dark, hopeless place.
Set in Baltimore, Ice
Cube stars as Durell – a smart
guy who has ended up on a path full of crime instead of the path with a
9 to 5
gig in an office with nice health insurance benefits and a Christmas
bonus. His pal,
LeeJohn (Tracy Morgan),
has gotten them fired from a good job working in a TV repair shop, and
Durell
needs to help his child’s mother with a lease payment on her
beauty shop, or
else she is moving to Atlanta
with their son.
Desperate, looking for a
quick influx of cash, and being chased by the Rastafia (Rastafarian
mafia),
Durell and LeeJohn decide to rob a prosperous church raising money to
move to
the suburbs (when did the Rastafarian mafia move into Baltimore?
Miami
I would understand, New York
I would understand, but Baltimore?
Will they be in this season’s edition of
The Wire?).
Will Durell and LeeJohn pull
off the heist?
Tracy Morgan is very funny
on 30 Rock. However,
the writers of 30
Rock did not have anything to do with First Sunday.
Instead, writer/director David E. Talbert attempts
to go for a Tyler Perry-esque mishmash of silly comedy, melodrama and
everyone
learning a lesson that will make them better people.
Ick.
First Sunday is one of those
comedies where everyone acts as if 30 points were subtracted from their
IQ when
they took the job. People
act very
broadly, and stupidly, as we see them engaging in slapstick antics, and
making mean
remarks about each other. Then,
Talbert
want us to believe each one of them, except the obvious bad guy, finds
some
sort of redemption during this one evening where Durell, LeeJohn and
all of
their captors talk about their lives, how they got to where they are,
and get
to know each other a little more.
Worse
yet, the less than mad cap romp becomes a drama with social commentary
as
Talbert throws in issues such as kids, church, the challenges faced by
the
inner city, father and son relationships and more as if Tracy Morgan
will be
our moral compass and show us the way.
Everyone is too silly early on for us to think they
could turn it around
and become so serious now.
Katt Wiliams, as the
church’s choir director, is about the only reason to see First Sunday. As
the most reliable comic relief, he
delivers the only consistent performance by staying silly from start to
finish
and making us laugh even when the material might not warrant it.
½
Waffle (Out of 4)
First
Sunday is
rated PG-13 for language, some sexual humor and brief drug references.
Copyright
2008 - WaffleMovies.com
